Biden and Xi at APEC, Macron’s Gaza Conference, Arab League Emergency Summit, and More

MCMAHON:
In the coming week, an Asian Pacific economic summit opens in San Francisco. France hosts a humanitarian conference for Gaza. And, the Arab League holds an emergency summit in Riyadh. It's November 9th, 2023 and time for The World Next Week.

 

I am Bob McMahon.

 

ROBBINS:
And I'm Carla Anne Robbins. So Bob, yesterday the National Zoo's three giant pandas, Mei Xiang, Tian Tian, and their born-in-captivity son, Xiao Qi Ji, had to look that one up. They took a FedEx cargo flight from Dulles Airport to Chengdu, China. Beijing has already recalled pandas from zoos in San Diego and Memphis and there's only four left in Atlanta and they're scheduled to return home next year. The Chinese never gifted these pandas, they leased them. But the fact that they're pulling them all home, the way you pull back diplomats, the scene is one more sign of a deteriorating U.S.-China relationship. So President Biden and President Xi are supposed to meet on the sidelines of this APEC conference in San Francisco. I assume pandas aren't going to be at the top of the agenda. So what are you going to be looking for at that meeting?

 

MCMAHON:
Well, I will be looking for some reference of pandas and maybe some future new generation of panda proliferation, shall we say. But in terms of these conversations in an expression that Andrei Gromyko used to like to say in the old Soviet days, "Perhaps, they'll be fruitful," in that I think just the fact of them getting together only the second time in Biden's presidency is a very big deal. It feels like it took a lot to get to this point in terms of just U.S. officials, actually officials going in both directions, high-level officials from China and high-level U.S. officials going to China. And I mean, all the top cabinet officials have been there to talk about getting to a place where the two sides can be in regular communication over the many, many issues that they have tensions over and that they should be talking about in any event.

 

And so I think we should be looking at this as an important sideline occasion. I think the last note I saw was November 15th is when they were going to be meeting and whether it's talking about real rote but important relationship items like military to military talks or it's been mentioned that they might come to some sort of understanding on extra Chinese controls over the flow of fentanyl precursors. And again, there's a licit fentanyl trade and China is a major producer of the precursor chemicals, but they're coming out of China in an uncontrolled way at the moment that's helping to lead to the U.S. epidemic. So those are the types of things that there has been discussion about some practical steps going forward. And the old famous, they will form working groups on X, Y, and Z is likely to come out of this as well.

 

But they have obviously two very huge areas. The economic tensions over areas like U.S. export controls on sophisticated silicon chips to China. Don't expect to see anything coming out of that. Certainly nothing changed in the U.S. response after the U.S. Commerce Secretary discussed them at length in China. But again, talking is better than moving to the next step. So further discussions on that process as well as trying to create a sense of regular communication over tensions in the South China Sea. We have seen buzzing of U.S. aircraft in neutral territory over the Pacific. We have seen incidents involving Chinese and Philippine ships at sea in areas that's contested. And of course, Taiwan where there is very strong disagreement on both sides. Perhaps some sort of statement in which Taiwan's status is again clarified and confirmed by the two sides. We'll see. But I don't think we're going to see anything else to quote our colleague Ian Johnson who wrote a setup piece on this, "Don't expect any breakthroughs."

 

ROBBINS:
So is the big thing about APEC, is it the sideline meeting or is there something we should be watching for in APEC more generally?

 

MCMAHON:
So first of all, we should note APEC is a forum. It's not a place where there's negotiations that happen over trade like a WTO meeting, for example. But it's an important forum for an important set of countries.

 

ROBBINS:
There's been a long time since there's been a global trade agreement in WTO meetings either.

 

MCMAHON:
Right, but in theory, APEC is not a place where you're going to be negotiating trade, but it is an important group of members. We call it members because Hong Kong and Taiwan are part of this twenty-one-member organization that was formed in the late 80's. And the U.S. is hoping to come to this meeting with an announcement about its own economic initiative called the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. It's really what some experts have said is the main trade initiative of this administration at this point, given the chill by both parties, by lawmakers of both parties toward trade deals in general. And Carla, I should note, our colleague Inu Manak has a new piece up on CFR.org explaining how IPEF got started and what it's trying to accomplish. 

 

And let's note the U.S. pulled out of the TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and there has been starting under the Trump presidency, but continuing under Biden again this wariness about trade initiatives. So I think they'd like to come to the table with some sort of announcement about Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, or IPEF, that there is agreement with an important group of countries, a number of which are both in IPEF and in APEC, that there are agreements on things like supply chain, the way supply chains function. And there are overall four pillars to the IPEF initiative, supply chains being one of them. Clean energy and decarbonization is another one. Tax and anti-corruption is another one. And then trade, which is the most thorny of the four. But there's hope that there will be an announcement about some progress made on these platforms coming up into the APEC meeting. And then it's a way, if nothing else, a U.S. demonstration that like China, it remains engaged in the region in advancing economic ties with important big economies.

 

So I think that's the big overtone aspect we should be watching here. And we'll have to see whether there is something unexpected that comes out of Xi-Biden because as I said, again, there were a huge number of meetings between high-level officials on both sides. And one expects them that they wouldn't be meeting if they couldn't at least agree on a couple of basic things.

 

ROBBINS:
We always have aides scrambling to see if they're going to be deliverables from summitry. It'd be really interesting to watch and see because IPEF, one of the reasons it exists is to not have China in it. 

 

MCMAHON:
Right.

 

ROBBINS:
It'd be very interesting to see how Biden and Xi work the crowd when they're in APEC. Not that we're suggesting we're going to be dividing up camps here, but it'd be really interesting to see how they work the groups, whether they're going to have their own pull aside meetings and try to divide APEC up or whether everybody's going to try to get along together. So that'll be an interesting meeting to watch.

 

MCMAHON:
Well, and APEC has had in previous years, I should say even eras at this point, it was one of these place where the Chinese and the Russian leaders and the U.S. leaders would let their hair down and get together and chat about ways of expanding, finding common ground on economic ties and so forth. Nowadays, and especially in this moment we're in, one expects there to be a definite discussion about the ongoing war in the Middle East, which we'll be talking about in a little bit. Like there was just the previous week when there was a summit meeting of some of the leading economies in the Americas and Biden. We talked about that previously on the podcast, the APEP. And they ended up with a concluding declaration that was very much about finding common ground and expressing common ground on democracy and rule of law and human rights and so forth.

 

That sort of declaration is not going to come out of APEC, but it will be an area, it'll be an opportunity for first of all, major representation of global population and global economic power taking stock of the state of the world. And that includes the security as well as the economic state.

 

ROBBINS:
Also be interesting to see whether or not there's any push on Ukraine because the Chinese, of course, were pushing their own peace deal. We haven't heard a lot from them on that topic, so I suppose we'll just have to watch that space.

 

MCMAHON:
Yes, and Ukraine, we should note in the past week received notice from the European Union that it can begin discussing the process towards EU membership along with I think Moldova and Georgia were in that conversation as well. That's a very big deal. There's a lot of steps that still lie ahead, but that was a big deal for Ukraine, which has been feeling neglected lately. 

 

Carla, I want to stay with the big summitry theme though of this podcast and talk about France. France is hosting an impromptu humanitarian conference on the sidelines of the Paris Peace Forum. Emmanuel Macron has decided to bring together representatives from a group of countries including Western G20, regional Middle East countries and so forth. But Russia and Israel are not invited to this. What are we expected to see from this gathering?

 

ROBBINS:
So I'm just wondering, these guys seem to go from meeting to meeting to meeting. And while I'm enough of an idealist that I think it's better to get people in the room to try to solve problems, there is a certain meeting overload that's going on here. So Macron has been way out ahead of many of France's closest allies on the conflict between Israel and Hamas. France was the only G7 country last month to support a UN General Assembly resolution calling for an "Immediate and sustained break in the war." And while he wavers between, sometimes he talks about humanitarian pauses, sometimes he talks about ceasefires, but he's really way out ahead of the allies.

 

And this conference, which was really pulled together in just a few days, could be seen if you want to see it in a positive light. And I think you could argue in a positive light, is a constructive way to keep up the pressure on Israel and the U.S. to mitigate some of the extreme suffering in Gaza without splitting the Western alliance over this is it a ceasefire? Is it a pause? What is it that we really are asking for? But the demands for a ceasefire and even harsher criticisms of Israel are only going to get louder in the days to come. And the EU is really worried about an internal split over this.

 

But right now what the French are doing with this meeting is they want to use the meeting to raise awareness of the UN's announcement that it's going to cost $1.2 billion from now just until the end of the year to meet the humanitarian needs of Palestinians, namely in Gaza, but some in the West Bank, to draw attention to some of the plans that are already being discussed. And I must admit, I didn't even know about these plans until I started looking at this to improve access in Gaza to aid and medical help.

 

We spent all this time talking about Rafah and the limited number of trucks that are getting in and the choke points. But there are a variety of other ideas that are under discussion, under serious discussion. The French have been in talks with the Egyptians about opening a military medical facility in the Sinai. They've also been talking about stationing hospital ships in the Med. The Italians are very interested in that as well. Cyprus, which is quite close, it's the closest EU country, is proposing creating a maritime corridor from its main port to Gaza to move in supplies and ferry out the seriously wounded. All of this is very challenging to implement, starting with the fact that Gaza doesn't have a functioning port for that to work. So some country would have to build a floating marina. And the biggest challenge, of course, is you're going to have to get agreement from the Israelis to do any of these things, whether it's to get people out of Gaza to those hospital ships or to guarantee safety of the construction of this floating port or the safety of the ships delivering supplies.

 

And as you noted, the Israelis were not invited to today's conference. The French said they feared their presence would only draw protest. But Netanyahu's under an enormous amount of pressure from the United States to deal with the humanitarian crisis. He's going to be more and more under pressure from the Europeans. So more creative ideas that are out there to deal with the humanitarian crisis, more the better. We do know grudgingly, the Israelis, we haven't heard from the Israelis yet, but as we were just about to record, the White House announced that the Israelis were going to agree to four hour daily humanitarian pause. Now that's not going to resolve the aid issue. It's not going to resolve the getting people out issue. I think the idea is basically to move peoples outward from Gaza that is more of a military interest for the Israelis. But clearly there's pressure on the Israelis and if there are some of these creative ideas, that's probably what the French want out of this conference right now.

 

MCMAHON:
So Carla, I agree. I think given all the pressure on Israel that it has built over the past month to have it yield, especially increasingly from the U.S. from what we've seen in reports to have it yield four hours every day of a pause seems pretty modest, but it's a start, I guess we could say. Are the meetings happening in Paris going to yield any sort of a statement or any sort of a pledge or non-binding commitments or things like that or what should we expect?

 

ROBBINS:
We will know in a few hours. And I think this thing was pulled together and there's not a large number of big players at this meeting. This is in the sideline of this other peace conference that he started actually during the Trump years to remind everyone that multilateralism was a good thing. And in fact, we never even sent a representative to this conference until Biden came in. But I think this is more to raise people's awareness of the whole thing. And I'm sure there'll be a statement afterwards, but you don't have enough heads of state. People probably were just informed of this a few days ago. I think, I suspect that the people working for Macron were just informed of this a few days ago. So there's a lot of scrambling going on. But there's something to be said, the fact that this is raised and will raise public awareness of some very creative ideas to deal with what is a huge humanitarian crisis inside of Gaza. So some potential for progress there as well.

 

MCMAHON:
Okay, so let's look for the French to potentially create a new line of aid and potentially momentum.

 

ROBBINS:
So Bob, let's stay on the topic of the Israel-Hamas war. Tomorrow, Friday, the Arab League is going to hold another emergency summit this time in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. This meeting was at the request of the Palestinian Authority and Saudi Arabia, and the biggest question beyond how to stop the war is who's going to run a post-war Gaza? One of the favored, if improbable solutions is a functioning Palestinian Authority underwritten by billions of Saudi money is going to do the job. Is this the meeting where they start working toward that idea?

 

MCMAHON:
I think that is one of the big questions that is going to be watched. And we should note that this is not just an Arab League summit, it's a weekend of summits. It's Arab League, and then the Saudis are hosting the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and the Iranians are attending that one. So that combo has also raised eyebrows, folks' attention on what might just be more of a talking shop. And by talking shop, it's not to dismiss the concern that's building in the region about what's going on, but there's very much concern about the spread of what's playing out in Gaza to more regional tensions. And having the Iranians involved is also a way of trying to limit tensions to the immediate region for now and not having this spread to Yemen, for example, where the Iranian-allied Houthis have reportedly launched missiles in the direction of Israel. But also there was a proxy battle going on there between Iran and the Saudis. Iran and the Saudis, as we have noted, only recently started to normalize relations again. 

 

So to your original question, I think very much there'll be talking about what sort of Gaza leadership scenario is realistic, but I think we'll see first very much a discussion about how to keep the conflict contained while these countries, Arab and Muslim countries, and again the OIC extends far beyond the Middle East into other Muslim countries into Asia and so forth. But how this combination of countries comes out and maybe speaks in some sort of combined voice about restraining the conflict. And by that, that means they want, I think you can expect them to ask for a ceasefire which is not in the cards and the Israelis have said they are, again, they are intent on destroying Hamas.

 

Hamas is continuing to fight back, is continuing to show it can use its tunnel system in Gaza to fight back. But still in all you will see that call. You'll see to echo the meetings in Paris, you'll see a great deal of concern about Palestinian citizens, the brunt they're taking on this. And so a political declaration and then a gesture and a sense from whether the Saudis as host of these summits, whether they are prepared to step forward and help to broker or start the process of brokering some sort of a bigger discussion about the role of the Palestinians in governing themselves. We should also note that the role of Qatar has been really important. There seemed to be talks percolating even as we were sitting down at this podcast about some sort of a deal involving a release of more hostages. There are still roughly 240 or 50 held by Hamas, but some sort of a release in exchange for a pause in the fighting.

 

Qatar has interlocutors with Hamas, has been able to have some sort of connection there and there is a hope that that can be built upon and we can have some sort of a situation where there is a regular release of hostages which might also create a greater momentum for pause on the Israeli side. They have cited the hostage issue repeatedly as well. You have U.S. CIA Director William Burns in the region. He's been in Doha I think up to today. I'm not sure whether he's going to emerge in Saudi Arabia or not, but he's clearly involved in discussing this whole host of issues as well. So lots of interesting discussions going on in Saudi Arabia and then Saudi Arabia's role is going to be something to watch.

 

ROBBINS:
So it is fascinating to me to see whether the Saudis are really ever willing to step up and take responsibility. Even going all the way back to the Madrid Peace Conference, dating myself as usual, in which there were huge expectations that in the wake of the Gulf War, the 1990's Gulf War, that the Saudis were going to finally take the lead and press for a two-state solution. And then they, of course, the U.S. sent all those troops in and made sure that Saddam didn't continue into Saudi Arabia. Then the Saudis went back to basically enabling lots of terrorist groups and going back to spend their money. Do you have a sense with MBS who is a different sort of leader in very scary ways, but also a different sort of leader in the sense that he has adopted other Western... We talked about Barbie in Saudi Arabia. Do you have a sense that MBS is ready to step up to the plate and really take a lead role here?

 

MCMAHON:
I mean, he is the new variable here from what you were referring to, Carla. He is staked out, while showing by all accounts of ruthlessness towards opponents of his rule. He has also staked out what he likes to fashion as a reformist role in Saudi society. He's clearly trying to expand and diversify Saudi economic strength and use its vast stockpile of energy resources in other ways. And militarily, he got involved in the Yemen campaign, which is widely seen as a major blunder on the Saudi part. But politically has a chance to do something here or at least to contribute to something that could raise the Saudi profile. Obviously, Saudi Arabia as steward of the holiest site's of Islam sees itself as having a special role and a role that might cause it to be reserved in some ways. But by the same token, I think MBS wants the Saudis to be a player, to be a major broker in the region. And so I think that's one of the things also to pay attention to.

 

ROBBINS:
I also, these negotiations of course with Qatar and Hamas are being on the American side our director of central intelligence, Bill Burns, is taking the lead on this. And you have to wonder that the role of, A) I suppose what the Saudis and what the Arab League looks at that to see that the United States is still very much in the center of these things. And at the same time for the U.S. this has to be just hugely frustrating. They're not getting much movement out of the number one ally, Netanyahu, and racing around trying to get movement out of all sides. This is a really hard thing to do for Biden, really hard thing to do. And meanwhile, they also have to worry about Ukraine. It's really hard when you're locked in so tightly with an ally that really doesn't want your advice.

 

MCMAHON:
No, it's not just about the U.S. being there, but the U.S. being effective and being seen as a leader and asserting some leadership. At the same time, as we've talked about previously in the podcast, Carla, dealing with some bit of dissension at home. And you have challenges in the Republican Party certainly. We're staring now at another government funding shutdown and disputes over support for aid measures that the administration wanted to combine Israeli and Ukrainian aid along with some other aid as well. And that's so far not happening. It has measures that has levers it can use to provide aid into both places, but it really, having the heft of the U.S. Congress behind it would really help its hand as it tries strenuously to both contain this conflict, support its ally in the Middle East, support its ally in Eurasia, send a message to China and Russia.

 

Some of this plays into what we were just talking about in terms of convening the meeting out in San Francisco and just in terms of the U.S. showing up and galvanizing like-minded states. But to your original point, it's really difficult and it's got to be extraordinarily difficult to do it with an unsettled U.S. political situation to say the least.

 

Carla, we've talked our way into the audience figure of the week portion of the podcast. This is the figure that listeners vote on every Tuesday and Wednesday at CFR_org's Instagram story. This week, Carla, our audience selected, "U.S. and China Talk Arms Control." A lot of figures involved in that, some of them opaque, some of them concrete. We've gone over the show on how vital it is for the U.S. and China to have these military-to-military discussions and arms control has been a dormant area. So are we looking at some progress here?

 

ROBBINS:
Well, it's certainly progress when the listeners choose the one I want them to choose on the audience figure of the week.

 

MCMAHON:
Yeah, no finger on the scale there, I'm sure, Carla. Yeah.

 

ROBBINS:
Right. And every one of my relatives on Instagram choosing that one. So these are the first discussions between the two countries on nuclear weapons since the Obama administration. And when it comes to nuclear weapons, any opportunity to increase transparency and lessen the chance of miscalculation is really good news as far as I'm concerned. But let's be clear about what this is not. These are not the beginning of arms reduction negotiations. The Chinese for years have maintained only what they call a minimal deterrent of a few hundred nuclear weapons, and they've always argued that there was no point in trying to draw them into reduction negotiations if the U.S. and Russia insisted on keeping thousands. That said, China's on its way to becoming a major nuclear player. According to the Pentagon's latest assessment, China now has 500 warheads, which is an increase of a hundred just over the last two plus years. And the Pentagon is predicting that it's going to grow its arsenal to 1,500 by 2035.

 

So any future arms reduction conversation is going to have to have the Chinese at the table. What's the point of these talks? The goal for now is to better understand China's plans and set up some mechanisms to avoid miscalculation. There is a hotline, one of those things that we set up with the Soviets during the Cold War, but the Chinese apparently didn't answer the phone when Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, tried to call after the U.S. shot down a Chinese spy balloon. That's not a good thing. So at a minimum, you want to make sure that there's a way to talk if something bad is going on here. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has proposed creating a multinational arrangement among all of the P5 states, permanent five, in the UN all have nuclear weapons who would agree to notify each other of missile test launches so they're not misread potentially as an attack coming.

 

There's a lot of work that has to be done to avoid miscues, miscalculation, a lot of work that has to be done. We don't really understand the Chinese nuclear doctrine. So the fact that the Chinese agreed to these talks is one more sign, much like the Xi meeting, much like the fact that they've been accepting all these visits from the U.S. and beginning to send themselves, seems like there is on both sides a desire. And one of the deliverables, as you mentioned, that we are hearing about potentially from the San Francisco meeting is more and more mil-to-mil contact. No way immediately to arms control talks, but I think this is part of the broader mil-to-mil opening.

 

One other thing that I think was really intriguing about this, Russia wasn't really happy sitting in a corner. The Russians have been walking away from arms control agreements right and left. Since Ukraine, Putin suspended participation in the last remaining nuclear reduction treaty, New START. But after the U.S.-China meeting, Russia said publicly that strategic dialogue with the U.S. over nuclear weapons was "definitely necessary," but that such talks could not happen while Washington was lecturing Moscow. So I think that's the Kremlin's way of saying nobody puts baby in a corner.

 

MCMAHON:
That was going to be my question, which is where are the Russians in all this? It's significant enough to have China and the U.S. finally reaching the stage of talks. But yeah, getting to the point where we have these trilateral talks and three major nuclear arsenals in the world, countries involved in overseeing those, sitting down and talking about any sort of a, first of all, a pattern of reliable communication, understanding each other's deterrent postures, but also maybe getting to a point of disarmament would be desirable. It just seems so remote at this point.

 

ROBBINS:
I think it's remote even having regularized contacts with the Russians at this point. One of the things when they said they were suspending participation in New START is they did say that they weren't doing this as a prelude to break out of the number limitations. Both sides are allowed to have 1,500, 1,550 deployed warheads. What they did suspend was inspections and notifications on what they were doing with those weapons. It's a huge blow to transparency. And the Biden administration is trying to at least get the Russians back into some sort of communications, including sending Moscow reportedly a confidential paper with some ideas on how to manage nuclear risks right now and potentially a post New START framework because it will expire in 2026.

 

So it's really interesting. I'm fascinated how you deal with a country that you're almost at war with. At the same time, this is awfully close to a hot war. At the same time, knowing you really don't want it to lapse into an inadvertent nuclear war. This is a tough diplomacy thing because as much as you can say, "Well, we're just going to fence off nuclear weapons here." You can't fence them off. So I found it intriguing that the Russians, they have a little bit of fear of missing out, I think.

 

MCMAHON:
And these are two countries we should note, Russia and China, that at one point not too long ago, were involved in trying to help limit proliferation to places like North Korea. It wasn't a long period of time, but they were involved in Security Council resolutions that were aimed at denuclearizing North Korea, and-

 

ROBBINS:
I wouldn't overstate their role in that. They voted for the Security Council resolutions and then happily violated them. But yes.

 

MCMAHON:
Well, yes, it's a matter of degrees, I guess you should say, since they can very well step up and either abstain or even veto such measures as they have been doing more recently, including humanitarian measures. But we'll take it by degrees. 

 

Well, Carla, that's our look at the world next week. Here's some other stories to keep an eye on. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, visits India, South Korea, and Indonesia. The Women Leaders Global Forum takes place in Reykjavik, Iceland. And, India celebrates Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Lights.

 

ROBBINS:
Please subscribe to The World Next Week on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts, and leave us a review while you're at it. We really do appreciate the feedback. If you'd like to reach out, please email us at twnw@cfr.org. The publications mentioned in this episode, as well as a transcript of our conversation are listed on the podcast page for The World Next Week on CFR.org. Please note that opinions expressed on The World Next Week are solely those of the hosts, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. 

 

Today's program was produced by Ester Fang, with Director of podcasting, Gabrielle Sierra. Special thanks to Sinet Adous and Kaitlyn Esperon for their research assistance. Our theme music is provided by Markus Zakaria. And this is Carla Robbins saying so long and so long to the pandas.

 

MCMAHON:
And this is Bob McMahon saying goodbye and be careful out there.